


Ease My Mind

by AngelOfBooze



Series: Autistic Phil Lester [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Autism, Autistic, Autistic Character, Autistic Phil Lester, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Meltdown, SIB(self injurous behaviour), ablism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 12:01:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4828412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelOfBooze/pseuds/AngelOfBooze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dinner was supposed to be nice, but when they arrive Phils already on the verge of a meltdown and the ablest pricks sat at their table aren't helping matters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ease My Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Looks like this will indeed be a series. I apologise for the title of this fic I couldn't think of anything.

Phils eyes skimmed the screen of his laptop as his fingers glided deftly across the key board. The apartment was quiet, Dan was still asleep at the early hour and the neighbours hadn’t yet started their incessant drilling. He was e-mailing their boss over at the BBC about a new segment he wanted to try out on the radio show. He was so absorbed in phrasing his e-mail in a way that would sound straight forward but not rude, that he jumped when he felt the couch dip down to the right with the weight of another human.

He heard Dan huff out a laugh. “Phil you spork. Hallo Kitty just ejaculated all over me!” The words took a few moments to register. He cringed “Sorry, just a little absorbed” he gestured to his laptop, which had tipped half way off of his lap when Dan had sat down and Phil had startled. “Need me to grab a towel?” he asked, looking at the wet patch on Dans pyjama pants. Dan shook his head, taking a sip of his tea.

“Nah, gonna be changing outta these any minuet, I need to restock our supplies” He said, looking down at his cereal and then at Phil. Phil grinned innocently. It had taken him a few months to realise what Dan was implying when he did those exact actions together. “I don’t know what you’re talking about” he said.

Dan frowned. “Now we both know that’s a lie”

Phil shrugged. “Was worth a try”

 

Dan snorted when he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Bless you” Phil responded instantly.

“That wasn’t a sneeze” Dan said, pushing against Phil playfully

“What was it then?” Phil said, stealing a sideways glance at his friend. Dans eyes were crinkling around the corners and his cheeks were dimpling.

“A sound of amusement”

“You sounded like a sneezing pig”

“Are you implying my sneezes sound like a pigs?” Dan asked, affronted. The only way Phil could tell that Dan was mocking was the hand pressed lightly, albeit unnaturally, against Dans sternum, a piece of body language they had developed to make public interaction easier.

Phil shoved Dan lightly, “What made you ‘laugh’” he said, making quotation marks with his fingers around the word. Dan rolled his eyes and looked back down at his phone.

“Mum’s invited us to a dinner with one of her work friends. Apparently she, the friend, liked the idea of having a couple radio hosts at her dinner”

Phil shook his head, he was forever confused with peoples reasoning and wasn’t even going to question it. “When’s the dinner?” Phil asked, pulling his phone from his pocket and opening up his planner app.

Dan made a soft noise at the back of his throat as his eyes scanned the text from his mum. “Uh, tonight, actually,” he said, “Mum apologises for the short notice” He added on. Phils breath got stuck in his throat. He had planned to edit a video that night. A soft whine escaped from him, and he began to wiggle his fingers slightly.

“I can refuse” Dan offered softly, reaching to the table beside him and picking one of Phils chewable necklaces off of it. He gently removed Phils fist from his mouth and handed him the thick piece of rubber silicone. Phil signed a thanks to Dan for stopping him from injuring himself. “I can I can” Phil said, he could go. He knew that going to the event was going to be stressful to him and that Dan would be on edge for most of it, but Dan hadn’t seen his family in a while and Phil didn’t want to stop him from enjoying his night with them.

“Okay Phil, do you want more details about it, or do you trust me to tell you when to get ready and what to bring?”

Phil rocked softly on the couch as he processed Dans words. “Trust” he said and signed the word for extra emphasis.

 

The dinner was starting at seven, Phil learned, and was a semiformal event. Dan had helped Phil find some clothes and to gather together a few stim toys to bring with them. Apparently there would be a number of other people at the dinner and the hosts of the party had rented out a small restaurant for the guests to mingle and eat. It was somewhere in the middle of London.

Phil slouched forward in the seat of the cab and rolled his shoulders. He was rocking quickly with his hands curled up into an ever moving ball just under his chin. Dan looked over at him and set a gentle yet firm hand on his back and rubbed it around in circles. The vibrations of the cab going over bumps in the road and the sound of the blinker tick tick ticking had set off alarm bells in Phils head. He knew the night would not end well. When the cab stopped at the location of the dinner Phil practically leapt out and onto the pavement and waited as Dan payed the cabbie.

Dan put a hand on his lower back and guided him into the restaurant. Because of his processing difficulties, Phil decided it would be best for he and Dan to sign for the foreseeable future. ‘where your parents?’ Phil signed to Dan, who signed back that they were seated at table 18, along with another couple Phil wouldn’t recognise.

Dan pushed Phil along to the table, evidently he had tuned into the fact that Phil couldn’t process the numbers set in a gold print on small sheets of paper in the middle of the tables. Dan pulled out Phils chair before rounding the table to greet his parents and the other two people, two finely dressed men, one balding. Phil stayed standing at the head of the table before Dan came back to him and pushed him gently down into the chair. It was wooden and the elaborate carving in the back dug into Phils back, setting his nerves on fire.

He started at a hand waving in his peripheral vision and jerked violently away from it, careening into Dan who was sat on his left. He looked up to see the unknown couple looking at him enquiringly. Dan and his parents looked affronted at the two people sitting at the end of their table. He registered that the couple exchanged a glance before the taller, a man in what looked to be his mid fifties, started to talk to Phil, exaggerating his lips as he went on. All Phil heard was something garbled, it sounded Gaelic he thought dimly. He looked to Dan for direction. ‘asked how long we’ve been together’ Dan signed to him. Phils eyebrows shot up. His brain struggled to process what the people were asking. Dan and Phil weren’t together, and so he couldn’t mean them. The couple knew Dans parents and so the man couldn’t have meant them either. That left only one option. ‘How should I know how long they’ve been dating?’ he asked Dan, looking to him for some social cue he wasn’t picking up on. Unless there was a giant neon sign pointing to the two men saying their marital status he wouldn’t know.

“It’s like they’ve got their own secret language!” the shorter, balding mans voice pierced its way into Phils eardrums. He could hear a nervous laughter go around the table. “Approximately 140,000 deaf and hard of hearing people use sign language in the UK” Phil replied quickly in an irritable tone only Dan could potentially pick up on before snapping his head back around to look at Dan, who swooped in to help Phil out. “We’re not together,” he said, “and Phils not deaf or hard of hearing either” he clarified to the two men, who, when Phil looked over at them, were starting at them.

“Then how do you know BSL?” the taller man asked, Phil registered he had a Scottish accent.

“Autism” Phil replied. When it was obvious Phil wasn’t going to offer up any more information the shorter mans face broke into an uneasy grin.

“It takes special people to work with special kids” he said, nudging his partner who nodded along with him.

“We don’t work with children, we make videos on the internet and host radio shows” Phil said, getting increasingly annoyed with the men. At the mention of ‘Internet Videos’ the taller man let out a whistle while his shorter counterpart elbowed him in the ribs. Phil was utterly lost as to what was going on. The men were completely ignorant to his meaning and Phil was lost when it came to their body language.

Dans parents quickly corrected the men. Dan and Phil were _YouTubers_ they explained, then they got Dan to relay the story of how that got them a job with the BBC. Phil tuned out for most of the conversation, instead he tried to gather his thoughts. So far he wasn’t sure what the mens names were or how they knew Mr and Mrs Howell, though Phil was sure those facts had been clarified earlier.

He focused on his breathing and on keeping his stimming to a minimum, choosing to have Dan squeeze his thigh under the table for some deep pressure.

He was jolted back into the conversation when the shorter man directed a question at him. “What?” Phil asked, his voice coming off harsh. The man looked slightly shocked before regaining his composure.

“What did you mean when you said ‘autism’?” the man asked. Phils brain rushed through how he could possibly phrase his reply.

“Uh..autism, a developmental disorder. Impairs social skills, first noted by Hans Asperger in-“

“I know what autism is, I want to know what you meant when you said it was the reason you signed.”

Phil squinted slightly. This man wasn’t making sense. “Dan?” Phil asked, looking for a way to get out of the conversation. Dan nodded at Phils request. He squeezed Phils thigh once before taking his hand away and bringing it up above the table so that he could gesture if need be. Out of all allistics, Dan was the one who made the most sense.

“Phils autistic” Dan said, and didn’t get any further before getting interrupted by the Scottish man

“Obviously high functioning” he stated as if he was a doctor giving a diagnosis. Phil tensed at that and Dans hand came down to rest on his thigh once more.

“Functioning labels are useless bullshit” Dan said simply before continuing on. “Phil finds it hard to process sounds sometimes and so we decided to take a few sign language courses together.” He finished, fully explaining why they spoke BSL and how they learned it in one sentence. Phil would never understand how he did it.

After that the conversation moved on to things Phil was uninterested in following.

 

Phil pulled uncomfortably at the collar of his shirt, it was fine when he and Dan had left the apartment but it had slowly felt as if had been getting tighter and more constricting as the evening wore on. Logically Phil knew it was the stress of the party that was causing the overhead lights to burn his eyes and the collar of his shirt to squeeze his throat, but he refused to acknowledge that fact. He didn’t want to spoil Dans evening.

A bundle of menus was delivered to their table during a lull in the conversation. Dan picked up his menu and read through it before selecting a dish and turning to Phil. “Need help?” he asked, tugging on the sleeve of Phils shirt gently. Phil nodded an affirmative. Dan leaned in close to him, his breath tickling the hairs on Phils neck and cheek. “What do you feel like eating?” Dan asked, “A warm dish or a cold one?”

“Warm” Phil replied instantly. He knew from experience that all cold dishes were leafy salads that his tastebuds had very little interest in.

“Chicken or beef?” Dan asked. Phil knew that he was leaving out the lamb dishes because the textures made Phils skin crawl and his stomach churn.

“Chicken” Phil replied. Dan nodded, his eyes scanning down the page, taking in all the dishes that had ‘chicken’ listed as their main ingredient. Phil remembered suddenly another aspect that he wanted in the dish. “Soup” he added on, knocking his shoulder against Dans gently. While the world was over stimulating, Dans voice and understanding made Phil calmer and more relaxed.

Dan nodded, an indication that he heard what Phil had said. “The only chicken soup dish here comes with alfalfa on the side, you okay with that?” he asked Phil.

Phil nodded. Yes.

The tall Scottish man clapped his hands together, startling Phil out of the calmness he felt and setting him back on edge. “That was a remarkable display!” He said in a strange tone of voice Phil couldn’t put a label to. It sounded both happy and frustrated.

Phil couldn’t bother to work out what the man was feeling, instead replying “That’s usually what happens when you’ve lived together for six years”

The man laughed. Phil looked to Dan for guidance. He couldn’t figure out why the man was laughing. Phil hadn’t told a joke or said anything funny. He simply stated a fact. He knew that it could have come off as harsh or sassy but he still couldn’t figure out why it would cause a man to laugh. Dan shrugged his shoulders, obviously just as lost as Phil was.

‘Do your parents like them?’ Phil signed to Dan, who responded with a resolute ‘no’. Phil was glad of that. He couldn’t imagine visiting Dans' parents for Christmas dinner and having the two ignorant men there as well.

 

The conversation died down once again, making it obvious to Phil that the two men had absolutely no idea how to hold conversations with Dan and his family(and Phil, though he wasn’t contributing much) Phil shook himself and looked around the table, he was sitting opposite from Dans mother, Dan was opposite his father. The two men were sharing a side of the square table to Phils right. He looked to Dan, ‘What are their names?’ he signed to his friend. Dan squinted slightly before finger spelling out ‘David’ for the balding man and ‘Matt’ for the other. Phil nodded, happy he had at least managed to get their names.

During the exchange himself and Dan, Phil noticed that David was watching him and Dan closely, squinting slightly. Phil squinted back, anxiety rising in his throat. Dan brought his right hand up and laid it on Phils shoulder before giving a firm squeeze and dropping it. “You right?” Dan asked, a frown tugging the corners of his mouth down slightly. Phil knew this meant that his friend was upset but doing his best to hide it. Phil assumed that Dan could somehow detect his emotions and was responding in a way that he considered appropriate.

David shook his head before inhaling. “No but seriously how long’ve you two been together? Unless they were in a relationship no one would be willing to do what you do.” At Davids remark Dan looked like he had been slapped. His mouth was hanging open slightly. Dans Father opened his mouth to say something before Phil held up a hand. “What exactly do you mean by that?” Phils voice was remarkably steady for someone as distressed as he was feeling. It was monotone, he felt like it sounded as if he was discussing the weather.

David cleared his throat. “No one besides a family member, carer or a partner would be willing to suffer what you’re putting Dan through,” David said before turning to Dan, “He’s at least two years older than you and he’s acting as if he’s your child!”, his voice sounded to Phil as if he were well and truly convinced of his statement, he sounded outraged on Dans behalf.

“You must never have experienced a fulfilling friendship then, asshole” Dan broke into the conversation, taking Phils hand in his. Phil realised this was more of a way to retrain him from delivering the hit he was lining up on himself. He nodded to Dan softly in thanks. In times like that, when Phils voice became monotone, he felt disconnected from his body and often didn’t realise he was about to injure himself until he had done it or someone had grabbed him.

David looked shocked. “Did you see that?” he hissed out to Matt, “He was going to hit me!” He sounded outraged as he scooted his chair back from the table. He stood up, pulling his jacket from the back of the chair and gathered it in his arms. Matt followed astutely behind him. Phil could feel himself coming back to his body as he watched Matt and David walk away from the table, obviously in search of the host. His hands began to shake and a quiet noise of distress escaped his throat. His free hand started making abortive gestures aimed towards his head.

“Let’s go outside” Dan whispered in his ear as he gently guided Phil out of his chair and away from the table, Phils hands clasped between his own. He was leading them both towards two glass doors that lead out into a little wine garden filled with fairy and tea lights. Because of the cool autumn weather the garden was all but empty, a few couples sitting close to the doors.

Phil licked his lips as they came to a stop at the end of the garden. He pulled his hands free of Dans and dropped to his knees before slapping the pavement. Most people would assume that Phil had absolutely no idea what he was doing, or had too little social skills to care that he looked like a toddler throwing a tantrum. They would of course be incorrect. Phil knew perfectly well what he was doing and what he, a twenty eight year old well-dressed man, looked like slamming his palms against the rough concrete with a younger man looming over him. He looked mad. He knew that. But he also knew that if he held his feelings in it would be worse for both him and Dan in the days following.

Dan dropped to his knees beside Phil after what he obviously thought was long enough for Phil to be grinding his palms into the ground, and gathered the other man into his arms. He squeezed Phil tightly against his shoulder, uncaring that Phils intermingling tears and sweat and snot would cause a stain on his expensive shirt that would be hard to get out. He threaded the fingers of his free hand into Phils sweaty hair and pulled on it gently, knowing the action would ground Phil and help him calm down.

“Let’s head home” Dan said into Phils ear when he had stopped shaking. Phil decided that was the best idea anyone had had in the history of England. Phil asked for a doggy bag for his soup and felt Dan nod against his cheek.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank-you for reading! Once again I appreciate all your reviews/comments and I read all of them :D


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